At my daughter’s Harry Potter-themed 9th Birthday sleepover this year, creating some of the oft-mentioned food in the series was a must. (For general party ideas, see my related article Harry Potter Party Ideas.) There is no shortage of ideas available online, as well as cookbooks available for purchase. Committed cooks can definitely go all out, but most kids will probably be satisfied with a couple favorites.

Making Butterbeer

There are so many ideas on how to make butterbeer available online that it was difficult to choose! Since the party was for kids, having recipes with alcohol was a non-starter (and there are quite a few available!). There seemed to be lots of approaches, most carbonated and variously flavored.

I looked at numerous Harry Potter fan sites, but with little time to taste-test, I couldn’t decide and turned the final formula over to my husband. Cleverly, he turned to traditional recipe sites that gave users the opportunity to post comments and reviews and settled on a recipe including crème soda, cool whip and butterscotch-caramel ice cream topping. I must say that while this seemed totally disgusting in concept, it was actually quite delicious. I’m not sure I could have stomached bucketfulls, but I did drain my small glass.

The cool whip and microwaved topping are mixed together and then put into individual glasses (we used 9 oz. plastic cups). When the crème soda was added and stirred in, they developed a nice, frothy head. The recipe from food.com is for a pint, so we made 6x the recipe and then served about 15 servings. We chilled the crème soda and left out the ice cubes.

Making Chocolate Frogs

My daughter’s favorite treat from the books is chocolate frogs. This is an easy treat to make as chocolate molds and melting chocolate are readily available. I bought a simple chocolate mold from Amazon and then purchased green melting wafers from the local party store.

My daughter and I had not seen any of the movies (we showed the first two at her party), so I was not aware that the chocolate frogs in the movie were brown and less “cutsie” than the mold I purchased. If I were to do it again, I would take this into account. I would also consider hunting around to see if there are Harry Potter trading cards (or making some myself) that could be packaged with a frog as they are in the books. We served one frog with the cake and sent another home along with party favors.

If you’ve never done chocolate molds before, it’s important to remember to look at the mold from the underside (the ultimate front of the candy) and to use a toothpick to remove bubbles work the chocolate down into any crevices. Without this step, when you pop your frog out of the mold, there will be lots of frogs with missing toes or noses.

There are numerous other ideas for the many treats mentioned in the books that are available online, some of which can double as party activities. Have fun and enjoy!

For more Harry Potter food ideas (also on Kindle in case you plan last minute like I do!):